I first heard from HelloFresh about 3 weeks after I had applied for the job - it was an automated email saying that they could not offer me an interview at the moment. However, 2 days after that email I received another one with the suggestion to schedule the interview. According to the email, the purpose of the interview was for them to get to know me better and for me to get to know what the hiring process was, so all quite standard. I thought it was odd but proceeded with scheduling the interview.
On the day of the interview, I received another e-mail saying that the interview would take place an hour earlier (perhaps due to the time zone confusion - I was in the UK at that time). That wasn't exactly convenient as it required me to make some changes to my plans, but it worked as I was pretty flexible.
As for the interview itself, I had mixed emotions. On the one hand, the questions asked were overall consistent with the job description and nothing unexpected was asked. On the other hand, there were a few puzzling things. First, my interviewer (a member of market research team) talked to me from their desk - I could literally see other people walking around, which I thought was not very professional. I am sure there is a meeting room at HelloFresh - why not use it? Second, although the talk was supposed to be two-sided and it should have been an opportunity not only for the company to know more about me but also for me to know more about the position and the work in the company, my interviewer practically did not leave any time for my questions. When I asked about the company's goals for the next few years for me to understand what kind of research questions market research manager would be primarily dealing with, they reminded me that we only had a minute left and cited HelloFresh's mission. Very lazy answer and not very helpful as you can imagine. Overall, I did not get a clear idea of who HelloFresh were looking for.
At the end of the interview, they told me they would be in touch with the next steps and disappeared. I followed up in a week and the person responsible for scheduling told me they'd follow up with the team. In a couple of hours, I received exactly the same automated e-email as the first time - "sorry but we cannot offer you an interview at this point" (I figured it was a "no"). I think it summarized the whole experience pretty well - not very professional and, at times, blatantly lazy and careless hiring process.